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Raynella Dossett Leath posts bond, is released from jail

KNOXVILLE — A day after a judge approved a recommendation to lower her bond, a Knox County woman who was convicted in the death of one of her two dead husbands was released from custody Wednesday, her attorney Joshua Hedrick confirmed.

On Tuesday, special prosecutors Cynthia A. LeCroy-Schemel and Joseph Y. McCoin Jr. offered — with little explanation — a bond recommendation of $50,000 for Raynella Dossett Leath, which her defense team of Hedrick and Rebecca LeGrand quickly agreed to.

Then Senior Judge Paul Summers approved the deal and set a new trial date of Jan. 12, 2017.

'We are glad that she is home with her family,' he said in a statement to the News Sentinel.

Leath has been accused of killing two husbands — former Knox County District Attorney General Ed Dossett, who died in 1992, and Dossett's best friend, David Leath, who died in 2003.

She was tried twice in David Leath's shooting death. A jury deadlocked in the first. She was convicted in the second. Prosecutors then dropped similar charges in Dossett's death.

In April, Summers tossed out the first-degree murder conviction in her second husband's death and awarded her a new trial because of the drug use of former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner during the January 2010 trial.

That ruling entitled Leath, who was serving a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 51 years, a shot at freedom via bond. Tennessee law entitles defendants charged but not yet convicted to bond.